Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Save-vs-DM Oct 09, 2010 8:28:54	Just a simple technical question here.  Has anyone had any luck getting the character builder/adventure tools working in Linux?  I'd really like to switch my netbook (also known as GM Screen 2.0) to Ubuntu, since it runs faster, but I don't want to switch unless I can get the tools I need to work. Anyone had any success on this at all or am I pretty much stuck with Windows?
#2 mudbunny Oct 09, 2010 9:25:31	I don't believe that they have managed to do a perfect emulation of .NET 4.5 sp1 in linux yet, so no, the tools do not yet run on linux.
#3 dbmeboy Oct 09, 2010 9:47:14	You could use virtual box to run windows inside of linux, that should work.  Alternatively, since Ubuntu can install inside of your windows partition and dual boot easily you could just do that and use Ubuntu except for when you needed to boot into windows for dnd.  Neither option quite what you wanted, but perhaps better than nothing?
#4 Save-vs-DM Oct 09, 2010 20:25:45	Thanks for the responses.  I did find a .net 3.5 workaround for WINE, but so far it's supposed to be total garbage. Maybe these new web tools will be an answer?
#5 arobicha Oct 09, 2010 23:53:06	A properly developed web platform will function in any operating system that has a standards compliant web browser; that being said, Linux is a tough nut to crack because it relies on open source resources. My guess is that enough beta testing while the CSS experts are still on contract will eliminate any rendering issues in Linux, but it might not look pretty the first iteration. I would also like to add that Linux has come a long way since my first foray into it, so it may be that some of the rendering issues I experienced a few years back won't be there anymore.
#6 gourdcaptain Oct 10, 2010 16:23:33	If they get the web tools running in Firefox on windows it should probably work on Linux - same rendering engine. Some of the more exotic browsers may have problems, but so would they on windows.
#7 dulsi Oct 12, 2010 13:32:10	A properly developed web platform will function in any operating system that has a standards compliant web browser; The character builder isn't a web application. As gourd said Firefox has the same rendering on windows and linux so supporting web applications isn't a problem on linux. WotC decided to use .Net for the character builder which prevents a Linux, Mac, or mobile version. It seems to have been a shortsighted decission IMHO.
#8 mudbunny Oct 12, 2010 13:40:14	WotC decided to use .Net for the character builder which prevents a Linux, Mac, or mobile version. It seems to have been a shortsighted decission IMHO. Nope. Not a short-sighted decision. It was a decision that made sense according to the limitations that were forced upon them when the DDI project was brought in-house.
#9 chadarius Oct 12, 2010 15:36:21	Not that I want to argue over this... but it was a totally short cited decision. Is WotC in charge of their own projects or not. I don't care whether it was being done by an external development house or not. It is absolutely insane for the character builder to not have been built as a web application from the very beginning. There was no reason for it to be a local application, and certainly not a .Net application that leaves out ~30% of the population. I don't really think there is an argument about whether it was short sighted. The only argument now is how things are moved forward. It sounds to me like there might be a web version of the character builder that is being developed. But I haven't heard anything but rumors. I can only encourage WotC to go as fast as possible in that direction. Heck... if they write the thing properly I could use it on my Android phone. But I'm not going to hold my breath. The character builder does actually work well... as long as you use that horrible Windows stuff. So I hope they can at least bring the same quality out in a browser based app at some point.
#10 dbmeboy Oct 12, 2010 15:44:34	Meh, the CB is far from the only thing that I can't use in Linux.  This is why I always dual-boot in the first place.  While it would be nice to not have to restart and switch OS to run the CB, I'd rather have an offline one available that only ran in Windows than an online only version that worked in Linux but that I couldn't use where I didn't have internet.
#11 cathak Oct 12, 2010 16:00:31	A properly developed web platform will function in any operating system that has a standards compliant web browser; The character builder isn't a web application. As gourd said Firefox has the same rendering on windows and linux so supporting web applications isn't a problem on linux. WotC decided to use .Net for the character builder which prevents a Linux, Mac, or mobile version. It seems to have been a shortsighted decission IMHO. As a Mac user I am now going to defend this decision. When the foundation for the CB and other tools were being developed (as far as I can tell this was winter of 2007/2008) the web was a different beast altogether. Chrome did not exist, Firefox was at the 2.x branch, Apple had just released the iPhone (with no app store) and nerds was warring like never before. The push for a common and standards based web was only gaining traction and no one thought HTML5 was worth anything and Silverlight was at version 1. Flash had ActionScript 3.0 and was the only real alternative to native clients, but Mac OS X and Linux would likely have seen some bugs there anyway. And sometimes you just got to run with what skill set your developers have. However, 2011 is promising to be a different year altogether and it would be unwise of the WotC developer team not to take careful note of platform agnostic applications. Especially the enormous gains in JavaScript speed modern browsers have seen since.
#12 mudbunny Oct 12, 2010 16:56:05	Not that I want to argue over this... but it was a totally short cited decision. Is WotC in charge of their own projects or not. I don't care whether it was being done by an external development house or not. It is absolutely insane for the character builder to not have been built as a web application from the very beginning. A short history lesson before I get to the meat of your argument. Oroginally, a programming house called Radiant Design (I think) was contracted to do the development on the DDI tools. However, they were fired and the DDI tools development was brought in-house with approximately 6 months left before the original deadline. Here is a post by elf, the original DDI studio head: When I originally joined the project though I was given a 6 month time frame to full release, 3 months to beta, and by the way, that includes the time I could spend hiring a staff. Staff was, fortunately, hired in short order, and I was lucky to get some great people on the team. With the short schedule though we were making decisions between releasing it as a web app, or perhaps winforms. We mocked up a web app and it wasn't responsive enough, we mocked up a winforms prototype, and it was slow and lacked the ability to do all the things we wanted to do so we ported to WPF which set us back a week but was so worth it. We were able to do more things, have better control of the UI and development time was very fast. Given the short schedule that we had it wouldn't have been reasonable to make a multi-platform version. Once we were done with the initial build I did cost out what it would take to make a mac version, as I think it is short sighted not to make one. The problem being that Wizards just doesn't have enough mac customers yet. They would need something like 10 times as many in order for it to break even, and that's not counting the fact that the majority of mac users can run windows apps in some sort of vm setup. It's also entirely possible that by the time there are enough mac customers there will also be either native osx support for wpf, or some sort of rapid development tool for mac/iphone that could be trivially ported too. It's also possible that with the coming release of windows7 that XP will drop in price so much that it doesn't make sense not to have a copy running in a vm with your mac. Given the environment and limitatations that they had, as well as the programming tools and browser capabilities 3 years ago, they made what was the best decision then. If they were to make the same decision with the advantage of today's browsers, computers and programming languages, they may have come to a different decision. However, one must be careful in assigning motives to the decisions of the past without taking into account *all* of the relevant data.
#13 marlett Oct 12, 2010 19:38:58	I just find it curious that deadlines were a lot more concrete back at launch than they seem to be nowadays.....
#14 mudbunny Oct 12, 2010 20:24:39	I just find it curious that deadlines were a lot more concrete back at launch than they seem to be nowadays..... They also didn't meet that deadline...
#15 Save-vs-DM Oct 13, 2010 9:18:32	Hmm, looks like the best I can do for now is hope that the web tools they were talking about offer me something a bit more browser-neutral - which would be cool. I also hope that if they do browser based stuff that it'll work with Adobe Air, since that would make it easier to run in the few places without net access.
#16 aluman Oct 13, 2010 11:24:06	Not that I want to argue over this... but it was a totally short cited decision. Is WotC in charge of their own projects or not. I don't care whether it was being done by an external development house or not. It is absolutely insane for the character builder to not have been built as a web application from the very beginning. To simplfy the decision process (That I am aware of) that lead to using .net they had Some work done on the CB and a few other tools utilizing .net.  They had no work done on CB on a platform that wasn't OS depedant. They could A). Start from scratch and spend a long time in development (not positive how much actual time in development, but a year is the minimum) B). Work with what they had and get the tools out something Sooner rather than Later (IT was still 2-3 months since they canceled the outsourcing before CB beta was released) There was no reason for it to be a local application, and certainly not a .Net application that leaves out ~30% of the population. I don't really think there is an argument about whether it was short sighted. The only argument now is how things are moved forward. It sounds to me like there might be a web version of the character builder that is being developed. But I haven't heard anything but rumors. We know for sure there is new web based tools... but what about the large percentage of people without constant internet access, or those whose primary gaming location doesn't have WiFi, should they be denied the use of CB? After all, smart phones in general only account for 13.8% of the US citzens.
#17 cathak Oct 13, 2010 11:33:38	but what about the large percentage of people without constant internet access, or those whose primary gaming location doesn't have WiFi, should they be denied the use of CB? I have said it before in other threads, but modern browsers (even IE8) supports localStorage, in short that is a persistent SQL database your browser can use while offline.
#18 arobicha Oct 13, 2010 16:12:52	I have said it before in other threads, but modern browsers (even IE8) supports localStorage, in short that is a persistent SQL database your browser can use while offline. I don't think that's the solution I would go for at this point... Exporting characters to PDF or their current xml based form, allowing them to integrate with the existing CB, would be a much cleaner and robust solution against people who don't have WiFi at their gaming centers (something which is quickly becoming inexcusable). Also, (to defend my previous statement re: rendering issues) while the Firefox rendering system is indeed the same across all platforms, I've had rendering issues crop up on the same version of firefox across different platforms... This was a long time ago mind you, and it may very well have been fixed by now.
#19 cathak Oct 13, 2010 16:55:40	I have said it before in other threads, but modern browsers (even IE8) supports localStorage, in short that is a persistent SQL database your browser can use while offline. I don't think that's the solution I would go for at this point... Exporting characters to PDF or their current xml based form, allowing them to integrate with the existing CB, would be a much cleaner and robust solution against people who don't have WiFi at their gaming centers (something which is quickly becoming inexcusable). Also, (to defend my previous statement re: rendering issues) while the Firefox rendering system is indeed the same across all platforms, I've had rendering issues crop up on the same version of firefox across different platforms... This was a long time ago mind you, and it may very well have been fixed by now. I was only addressing the offline/online issue. All browsers have native and fast XML parsers to take care of that issue already. Things would be much more difficult if they had to maintain two different platforms though.